We are joined today by a very special guest, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily, the champion of Oscar blogging and the one that inspired many of us here on the site to pursue writing. We have a jammed-packed agenda getting into some fun, general Oscar talk, and much more. The agenda is listed below:
God, in late August and early September many film critics and Oscar writers (including myself) were predicting it would win Best Picture and a third Best Director Oscar for Spielberg. In fact, if I remember right, it was as though no other films were even in contention that year. Of course come Oscar time the Academy lost their mind in voting Crash (2005) Best Picture, one of the their lamest choices ever, while Ang Lee took Best Director for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which many felt, myself included was the years best film. Spielberg’s Munich (2005) while nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Film, Director and Screenplay won not a single award, and in fact when released, did not earn the sort of rave reviews expected. It was liked well enough, and I believe it to be among his best and bravest films, but there were simply stronger films that year, Brokeback Mountain (2005), and King Kong (2005) among them. Read more on Some thoughts on the Upcoming, “Lincoln”…
I always anticipate a Woody Allen film, but Woody’s return to New York (even if he’s mainly going to be shooting in San Francisco) is an extra reason to be all in for Allen’s 2013 release. He’s got a great cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Emerson, Sally Hawkins, Louis C.K., Andrew Dice Clay and Peter Sarsgaard, and if The Playlist has it right here, there’s a surprisingly current undertone to the plot. You can see the details after the jump, but any film by the Wood man is a film worth seeing in my book. Read on below for more…
Has an entire decade passed since Martin Scorsese’s massive and flawed, and massively flawed Gangs of New York (2002) thundered onto screens for the first time? It seems like yesterday that I was reading the film’s release date being delayed a full year in light of 9/11, which also permitted Scorsese to film further scenes and edit the film down to a reasonable length, all to the anger of Weinstein.
A dream project of Scorsese’s, he was invited to make the film for Miramax, which meant working with Harvey Weinstein, perhaps the only man in the industry with a temper as volatile as the director. Of course, Weinstein had an agenda, bringing an important director such as Scorsese to Miramax made his company all the more impressive, and Weinstein believed for the film, Scorsese would finally win that long elusive Academy Award. Why? Because he said so. Read more on Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” – Ten Years Later…
Up until he blew me away with ‘Into the Wild’ in 2007, I’d always been hit and miss with the directorial outings of Sean Penn. I appreciated him adapting a Bruce Springsteen song for ‘The Indian Runner’ (he based it on the song Highway Patrolman) more than I actually enjoyed the film, and I was lukewarm on ‘The Crossing Guard’. That being said, I do like ‘The Pledge’ quite a bit, so he’s hardly a one hit wonder in my book and I definitely can’t wait to see him tackle another project. Variety is reporting here that he’s found a new one, and it’s another film set in the harsh outdoors. After the jump you can see some details about the flick, but it sounds like a winner to me. You can find more below…
Perhaps no movie far down the pike has me as excited as Darren Aronofsky’s film ‘Noah’. A true passion project that the filmmaker has been working years to get off the ground, it’s currently in production (scheduled for release in March of 2014) and Aronofsky has been tweeting out fun little updates to tease us even more. In a USA Today story on his tweets (found here) they also managed to debut the first image of Russell Crowe in the title role. You can see the full image after the jump, but it looks more or less like you’d expect one who builds an ark to look, especially when played by Crowe. Take a gander below at the larger look.
Another week, another entertaining time at your favorite awards prognostication site, The Awards Circuit! We began by presenting another installment of our popular “Power Hour” podcast series, this week’s being one of the most listened to yet. Please be sure to check it out, as Editor-in-Chief Clayton Davis, Joey Magidson, Terence Johnson, and yours truly break down the current “state of the Oscar race” alongside many more fun topics. Michael Ward provides us with the Weekend Box Office updates while Mark stuns us again with another “Did You Know?” segment. Please, do yourself a favor, have a listen. Also, don’t miss the upcoming episode with Special Guest Star…*drum roll*…Sasha Stone from Awardsdaily.com! The Empress of Awards Prognostication joins our weekly dissection of the 2012 awards race, and she’ll definitely be listening in on — and perhaps responding to — yourreader questions! Have I gotten you excited enough yet? Gee, I sure hope so! Read more on Circuit Round-Up (Week Ending 8/12)…
We are joined today by a very special guest, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily, the champion of Oscar blogging and the one that inspired many of us here on the site to pursue writing. We have a jammed-packed agenda getting into some fun, general Oscar talk, and much more. The agenda is listed below:
